Help us find the best Calgary neighbourhood for cycling

I’ve been wondering that for some time, ever since the U.S.-based website Walk Score unveiled its most bikeable U.S. cities (Minneapolis and Portland topped the list). The website began several years ago by ranking of the walkability and locations by measuring things like the distance to amenities and the directness of routes. It’s an interesting little tool, fun for comparing your address with that of your friends, and always seems to spark discussions around urban walkability. The success of that initiative led those to the development of a transit score and, now a bike score.

The site measures bikeability by looking at nearby bike routes, hills and nearby amenities. It’s not a perfect system, but it gives a good idea of which areas in the city are the best for cyclists. While a comparison of different Canadian cities has not been done yet, the site does offer an interesting heat map that shows the best areas of the city.

What I’m interested in, however, is bragging rights. Which Calgary neighbourhood is the best for cycling? The map doesn’t tell us that.

But with some legwork, and some help from you, we can find do that.

Last year, during the Herald’s data-driven look at Calgary’s ‘hoods called Project Calgary, we compiled a Walk Score ranking for each neighbourhood in the city. How? We chose four addresses in every neighbourhood (we chose diverse locations within a neighbourhood to try and get a flavour of all aspects of the community) and plugged the addresses into the Walk Score website (if your address happens to be in there, trust me, it was complete happen stance. We simply chose my looking at a map). Then, we crunched the numbers. I’d like to do the same with cycling, and I’m hoping you do too.

Here’s where I need your help

I’ve adapted our original spreadsheet to create a bikeabilty comparison of Calgary’s neighbourhoods. The spreadsheet below contains four addresses in each neighbourhood in Calgary. We need to plug each of those addresses into the Walk Score website, then plot the results in the spreadsheet. Then we’ll crunch the numbers and see which neighbourhood comes out on top. I’ve already started doing it, but there’s a lot of addresses there, so I’m hoping we can all chip in to make the process faster.

Here’s how to do it.

Copy an address from the spreadsheet (the spreadsheet is embedded in the bottom of this blog, or you can see the whole thing here) that has an empty field to the right (the yellow fields are the ones we need to fill out).

Note: I recently turned off editing on the spreadsheet because it’s done! Wow. In a matter of hours you made it happen. Thanks so much everyone. I’ll crunch some numbers and share the results as soon as possible.

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